 Thank you Pat. When I was asked to do the introduction for Mayor Castro, Secretary Castro, I was thrilled because I wanted to tell everyone here a story about a phone call that changed my life and it was a call from Mayor Castro. Right at four years ago, he called to ask me to be one of the tri-chairs of SA 2020 and let me just say for sure I had no interest in doing it. I mean I had beyond no interest in doing it and because really I had lost my interest in downtown. I had lost really, that is I had no vision for myself of ever really doing anything else in town. I thought I'm well invested in downtown already. Thank you very much. Don't need any more. And also I would just say that my interest in being more involved with the city was not very strong. In fact, I had never spent more than ten minutes with a mayor in my entire history prior to that time. And so really I had not been part of the political process in any respect in the city. The only exception to that was when the city supported the shopping mall, Windsor Park Mall to be converted into Rackspace's headquarters. That was really my only sort of brush with politics in San Antonio. But that phone call four years ago changed my life and one reason is because I was celebrating, four years ago I was celebrating having sold my first round of Rackspace shares. And you know what I did? I paid off all my debt, except for one exception. And it felt really good and I actually had some money in the bank for the first time. I mean I'm talking about this was sort of the after twelve years of toiling away at Rackspace with my colleagues. You know it just felt magical to have the debt that I had incurred buying Rackspace shares, building Rackspace and debt in other places totally paid off in money in the bank. That felt really good. And yet that phone call changed all that. I'm back at debt again because of the things that I'm doing downtown with my colleagues, Lorenzo, Randy and our other colleagues. And with that phone call, I didn't know it, but that phone call was to bring three gifts to my life. Three gifts. Gift number one is ambition for our city. I personally had very little ambition for our city. Four years ago Rackspace was 3,000 people. Today it's 6,000. Four years ago Rackspace was about a billion in revenue. We will end this year just short of two billion in revenue. And we're growing strong. Contrary to what you might read online, very soon I would love to be invited back when Rackspace hits 10,000 employees. And I know that day is not very far away. But that phone call really was the spark of gift number one, which was a personal ambition for our city, that he gave to me and I think he gave it to all of us. Did he give it to you? That ambition was an ambition that we should think bigger. We should dream bigger. We should believe in ourselves. We're a city that is evolving, emerging right now. This is not like Chicago or Houston or New York. Those cities have been great cities for decades, but our mayor asked us to be great during our lifetimes. I'm talking the lifetime that you have right now and to give it to our children in a very different city than the one we inherited. And it's going to be because of what we all do. And this was part of the gift is that he actually gave an invitation to me to say, Graham, do you think you have a role in the city becoming a great city? And so to me, gift number one is ambition for our city that included a role for me, I think a role for me in helping move us to the next level downtown. And that really is why we made that announcement last week about Frost Bank. We're going to be building the newest, biggest building in town and with the support of the city and the support of Frost Bank, that's going to happen. It's going to come to life. We're all going to be proud of that. Gift number two is during SA 2020, SA 2020 started in September of 2010, four years ago. And during SA 2020, I received an email from a racker, from a racker who lived in Blacksburg, Virginia and at one of our offices there. And we were asking him and his colleagues to move to San Antonio. Two of the three colleagues did move here. One did not and he wrote me an email that said, Graham, I just want to tell you definitively I'm not moving to San Antonio. Instead, I'm going to move to Austin. That's because San Antonio has no startup scene. It has no walkable, it has no sort of urban scene. It has no software developer scene. I'm not moving to San Antonio. Thank you, sort of stop harassing me was his message. And he moved to Austin. I mean, he did move to Austin, but the rackers who moved to San Antonio made a big difference. Is Pat Matthews here by chance? Pat Matthews is a part of our city. He's making our city better. But I think this email, I actually forwarded it over to the mayor. And the mayor actually, the only email address I had at the time was an AOL address. And by the way, in the tech world, it very uncool to have an AOL address. Woo! So, but the second gift that he gave me arose from SA 2020 was the notion of the decade of downtown. Because before SA 2020 really solidified that downtown was something that we all aspired to have as part of our lives. We wanted to have a great hustle bustle downtown. Before SA 2020, it really was not on the mayor's agenda. So it was during that time that the words decade of downtown were coined. And that is really to me what brings us to this presentation. And to this, to Centro being what it is today. So that's gift number two. And I believe that today, having hired 3,000 rackers on a net basis since that time, you know, I think that our city is more marketable today. And look at what's happening around Pearl. Thank you, Pearl. Look what's happening around Southtown. Thank you to all the people there. That is, our city, you can get a glimpse of what the inner city can be. You can just get a glimpse of it. And it's going to be so exciting in a couple of years. The goal during the decade, the goal for the decade of downtown, and the SA 2020 goal was to build 7,500 housing units in the inner city. We're already halfway there at 3,500. That's incredible. And you can just see, we're going to hit that goal and go well past it. Downtown is going to change our city. It's going to make certainly our city more marketable to every new racket that moves here. And it's going to be a better place to live, and especially for the young people in your lives. The third gift is a gift that the mayor leaves behind, which is that we are genuinely a city that is on the rise. We're a city that has broken out of the sleepy city that we've been for the last 20 years. We were all proud to be part of, but it wasn't really known around the world. And didn't it really, I don't know that it aspired to greatness, the way that our city does today. And a mayor left leaves us with a city that is not only that has risen during his time, but that will continue to rise long after he's gone. Every time we see his face on TV, we can know that he is not only the face of our Washington government. He's really the face of our city, the face that represents all of us. The city that's on the rise, the decade of downtown, and a city that is aspiring to be greater in the coming decades than it's ever been in the past. Mayor, over to you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Graham, for the very warm introduction. And more importantly, thank you for the tremendous work that you have done over these last several years and really over a career that is making San Antonio a greater place to live and to do business and even more prosperous than many of us imagine. So thank you for that, Graham. I also, of course, want to thank Pat DiGiovanni and Central Partnership for putting this together on fairly short notice. You all have done an excellent job, Pat. Thank you to you and Don Frost and the board. It's just been fantastic to see Central stand up the way that it has and to succeed and to help provide so much momentum to the decade of downtown. Of course, yesterday I got a bit of great news in my life. Thank you. And I was so happy that at around 11.30 yesterday morning, I could sit in front of a TV, never thought I'd be so happy to watch C-SPAN 2 along with my beautiful wife, Erica, and our daughter, Carina. Thank you all very much for being here and for your love and for your support. Erica is pregnant with her second baby. I used to tell her that I didn't want to be 40 years old and still changing diapers, but I guess that's inevitable now. And my only regret, I think our only regret is that our young son or daughter is going to be born in D.C. and not here in San Antonio, but we'll change that as fast as possible afterward and bring them back. I also want to acknowledge the presence and the great contribution of my colleagues who are here, my council colleagues. I'm someone who has very much appreciated serving with people who are very intelligent, who are competent, and who have the best interest not just of their districts, but of all of San Antonio in mind when they make decisions. So thank you all very much for your leadership and the leadership that you're going to continue to provide. I want to especially recognize Councilman Diego Bernal, the District 1 Councilman who represents downtown and who I've called a friend since we hung out in the playground at the Foya Middle School on the west side 20-something years ago. Diego, you've done a stellar job as Councilman, and I know that you have a very bright future ahead of you. Thank you. And we're very fortunate in San Antonio because we have, I think, the finest city manager in all of the United States, a true professional, someone who gets the job done and has worked hard over the last several years to get San Antonio to where it's at on many different levels. Thank you, Cheryl, for your great work. I especially also want to thank Lori Houston, you and your staff for your great work on downtown. Many of the folks who have worked with Lori and her staff know how excellent her work is and the great effort they put forward. Shannon Miller as well in the Office of Historic Preservation. Thank you for your work. Daryl Byrd, I know that the SA 2020 crew is here somewhere over here. They didn't buy the most expensive table, which is good. Thank you all for the work that you all are doing. SA 2020 has just been tremendous in our community. And finally, I wanted to thank my staff. Where's my staff at? They spent even less. I wanted to thank Francis Gonzalez that I see back there and Sarah McClornan, Adam Greenup, Matthew Shweiger, Jaime Castillo who couldn't be here today, Jed Mabius who's on vacation right now in Holland, Michigan, Patty Buente who has been one of my assistants, my secretary since I walked into City Hall as a 26-year-old councilman and Stacey Weber who's done just a fantastic job as well. And I am probably forgetting somebody, I hope not. But they have just been doing a tremendous job over these last few years. Same thing goes for Robbie Greenbloom who has moved on to bigger and better things in the city attorney's office. This decade of downtown has a lot of momentum. It has a lot of momentum not just because of the work that we have done at the city or the private sector has done but also because of the work that our county judge, Nelson Wolfe, has done. Nelson, it has been absolutely a pleasure and a thrill and very educational for me to get to serve with you. You have been a great public servant for many years now. We're all in your debt. Thank you for the good work that you continue to do for our city. So this is the decade of downtown. Cevallos, 1221 Broadway, the Mosaic, the Can Plant, 1800 Broadway, the Steelhouse Lofts, South Flores, the River House, Big Techs, the Casablanca Lofts, the Peanut Factory Lofts, Sojo, that stands for South Josephine, East Quincy, Elon, the Cherry Modern, Merchant's Ice House, 1130 Broadway, 307 Dwyer, the Southtown Vias, and the Sellers Project at Pearl. That is the decade of downtown that you see in front of you and it is unstoppable now. There are folks in this room and many folks in our community who remember a time when downtown San Antonio was the place to be in our city. Before there was a Northstorm Mall or even a Wonderland, before there was the Quarry Market or La Cantera, there was Frost Brothers and there was Jockeys and there was Hutchins Men's Store and McNeil's Jewelry Store. There was, on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons, crowds that would gather to shop and to socialize, crowds that made San Antonio, San Antonio's downtown, the hotbed of activity. There are folks in every corner of this city, in single-family houses, in senior apartments, in our nursing homes who can tell you that story and over the last 15 years, I've heard many of them. Downtown was not just the retail hub of our city, it was also the commercial hub, the place for headquarters like Frost Bank and car dealerships all along Broadway. It was the place that was the medical center before there was a medical center with doctors' offices, the Santa Rosa Hospital with lawyers' offices that dotted the landscape around the county courthouse. It was also the cultural hub of San Antonio. Think about the names that we still see today like the Majestic and the Aztec, the Empire, the Alameda. It also had places like the Market Square, places that contributed to the everyday artistic and cultural advancement of our community. And then, somewhere along the way, the city started to sprawl. It grew further and further out. People moved to the Jefferson area and then out to Oak Hills and out to I-10 and 4-10 and then eventually to 1604 and 281. And now today, even beyond that, the downtown area began to get less invested in. In 1968, the Hemisphere brought an infusion of energy and of aspiration and possibility. Since that time, 13,000 hotel rooms had been built in our downtown area. Over time, the locals mostly left downtown with a few notable exceptions of housing developments and more and more tourists populated the Riverwalk, the Alamo, and the other attractions of our downtown. What happened was that somewhere along the way, something very precious went missing in San Antonio. What went missing was a sense of ownership by San Antonians, a sense of connection between the community and the downtown. Five years ago, in July of 2009, I declared that this decade would be the decade of downtown. I did so because I'm convinced that great cities need great downtowns and because there are few big cities that can prosper without one. I did so because I'm convinced that there are cross currents of this 21st century that demand that a city like San Antonio make sufficient investment to create a great downtown. The fact that people and capital are more mobile than they ever have been in this 21st century global economy. And the future belongs to those communities who create brain power and a good cost of living, but also who create vibrancy and cultural relevance and a sense that something is happening in your city. That's where downtown is so important. So as part of SA 2020, our community came together to dream about the next 10 years for San Antonio. And we set a lot of goals. One of those goals was that we would go out and create a downtown that is culturally rich, vibrant, and 24-7. One that is meaningful to tourists and to residents alike with something for everyone. But the fact is that declarations are meaningless themselves without action. And so over the last few years at City Hall and in our community with the help of our private sector, our county, and of course with Centro, we've gotten to work. We created urban core investment incentives like the Inner City Incentive Fund. We refocused city incentive policy to downtown by creating the Inner City Reinvestment Infilt Policy, also known as ICRIP, and the Center City Housing Incentive Policy, CCHIP, and we invested $93.5 million of our 2012 bond issue in downtown after only $11 million had been invested five years before. We invested it in important infrastructure projects in our roadways and in our parks like Hemisphere Park. We established a Housing First policy to incentivize the development of housing and also to incentivize our own city employees and others to come and live downtown. We worked on changing the mindset of our economic development approach from one that said first we're going to consider going out to the new parts of town to one that said first we're going to consider going into our older neighborhoods like downtown, so with the leadership of our city manager we had some good success with companies like VisionWorks and I'm confident that that success will continue. And the results that we have seen because of these actions are compelling. When we declared the decade of downtown there were 3,034 housing units in the downtown area. Since that time we've seen the development of an additional 3,573 downtown units. That's more than double what was there before. Of the 20 housing projects that I talked about earlier, seven of them are rental projects that have come online and on average they have a 93% occupancy rate and are 98% pre-leased. These housing units represent a total investment of $574 million into the city and the city of San Antonio has provided $54 million of an incentive and on top of that housing we also see the coming online of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts the Briscoe Western Art Museum, the development of Hemisphere Park and that elusive catch that we've been waiting for for so long a downtown grocery store for people to actually shop in downtown and the recent announcement by Frost Bank and Weston Urban that will bring, I'm confident, the first high rise office tower to downtown in more than a quarter of a century will only catalyze that momentum even more and ensure that no matter the leadership in place, no matter the year, whether it's 2014 or 2024, that the momentum stays with downtown. The decade of downtown is not really nor has it ever been about trying to recapture the past. It's really about the future of this city and so as I get ready to say a very bitter sweet goodbye for now to San Antonio, I believe that there's certain things that we must do, things that we must resolve to accomplish as a community to ensure that San Antonio is as economically competitive as we can be in this 21st century global economy because of our downtown. The first is that we must continue to incentivize housing downtown until the market takes over. We're only about halfway to our goal of 7,500 housing units but I'm confident that we can get there by 2020 if we stay on course. Secondly, it's very clear that downtown is becoming a hub for 21st century entrepreneurs. There's no better example of that than Geekdom, a work sharing space in all the great small companies and individual efforts that are bubbling up that will grow into the rack spaces of the future. Recently we opened up Cafe Commerce, which I believe supplements the great work of Geekdom and others that are fostering, cultivating the brain power and the energy of so many folks with great business ideas, particularly in 21st century industries, whether it's in cybersecurity or information technology or gaming or anything else, we will all be the beneficiaries of the work that's happening there. Thirdly, we must do everything that we can to spark a revival of street level retailers downtown to fill vacant storefronts. I want to commend Councilman Bernal for his work on the vacant building registration pilot program, which I'm confident will be a great first start to help make that happen to better understand where we sit. However, we need to keep moving forward to look at ways that we can work with property owners and look at zoning adjustments in the future to see if we can incentivize movement. Fourth, it is in the entire city's best interest that we continue to invest infrastructure dollars in downtown. That means for our streets, that means for drainage, and that means for the Via Streetcar as well. The Streetcar project is an important part of revitalizing the urban core of our city. It will be an excellent people mover and a catalyst for future economic investment in our city. I have always tried to work as mayor in the spirit of thinking through what's good for our entire city and not just one part of town. And I would caution this community to over listen to the voices of folks who would pit one side of town against another side of town. Those who might scapegoat downtown as the reason that folks in other parts of the community still wait for their street to get fixed or still have drainage needs. The fact is that investment downtown or investment in other places is good for the entire city. The fact also is that significant investments are being made in each part of our community. Just as I'm proud of the decade of downtown, I'm proud of the work that we've done on our east side where for the first time, significant city and federal dollars are working together with the non-profit and the private sector to catalyze a resurgence of that east side and lift up the quality of life in those neighborhoods and in the schools. The same thing is happening in our south side where Brook City base is doing miraculous things and the new south side is blending with the old south side on the west side where we see signs of life in our corridors like Commerce Street and Gulevra Street on our near north side where the Broadway corridor with its children's museum and its parks and neighborhoods like Mankey Park, not to mention closer in to the downtown area have experienced a revival and also of course, far out in our city, beyond 281 and 1604 that continues to get developed and where over the last decade we have spent the most amount of transportation and infrastructure money. The future of this city's prosperity lies not in pitting neighborhoods against each other or singling out downtown as a place we don't want to invest but in understanding that all of us will rise together if we tend to all of the city's needs including downtown. And finally, going forward we have to make sure that ours is a downtown that belongs to everyone. Early next week I'll appoint a mayoral task force on diverse and dynamic communities to make recommendations on policy to keep our urban core lively but also affordable for folks along the income scale. I've asked Councilman Bernal to chair this task force and I'm confident that they'll come up with good policy to guide us going forward. Recent decisions by our city council as well as our zoning commission and planning commission remind me that there are always two sides to the coin when we experience prosperity in an area and what we want when we reach 2020 is a downtown where people of different means can afford to enjoy it. People of different places can be part of it. The truth is that I haven't seen a single city that's been able to handle this well but I am confident that here in San Antonio we can come up with great ideas and implement them and I hope buck that trend. Twenty years ago this week I reported for work as an intern at the White House in the Office of Cabinet Affairs. Of course I never imagined twenty years later that this summer I would begin as a cabinet member at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I mostly that summer shuffled papers and got to do what interns usually do. Sorry to my interns who are here which is not much. And throughout that summer and the time that I was away I always looked forward to getting back to our city and these days I look forward to that again. In fact, I look forward to Friday, September 25th, 2020. Ten years after we kicked off SA 2020 I look forward to walking in the downtown of tomorrow. A place that I know will be teeming with people from throughout San Antonio and the region when we hear different languages spoken. Place where locals and visitors both enjoy the sights and the sounds. Maybe I'll go enjoy a show at the Tobin Center or go check out the latest exhibit at one of our museums or catch a show at one of the theaters or maybe Erica and I will take our youngest son or daughter to go play in the playscape at Hemisphere. We're going to enjoy that downtown of the year 2020. We have in this city two of the most powerful things that a community can have that don't show up in a balance sheet or on a pie chart but they make a world of difference. The first of those things is optimism a sense that we are a city on the rise a city whose better days are ahead and that's true. The thing is and any one of you who have traveled much around the world can say this that's not the case everywhere there's something special about San Antonio because of that and secondly we have a vision for where we're going. We're building in this city a brain power community that is the liveliest city in the United States. I have always believed that cities have destinies that because of your work and the work of so many others and that optimism and that vision for San Antonio our destiny is prosperity. Thank you. Thank you Mayor. Thank you so much for energizing us and challenging us to stay the course a course that you've navigated so well for us and I'll tell you one thing we will not let you down sir. You've been an outstanding leader and we wish you great success at HUD. If I may Councilman Bernal if you would join us Erica if you would as well up on the stage and Graham and Paula before we close we'd like to make a special announcement and as you heard in the Mayor's remarks today was about the future of downtown but I think it's safe to say it's also about leadership now and in the future it will take continued leadership to return our downtown and our center city to the greatness that Mayor Castro described. Now I'm not going to be able to go home tonight unless I introduce my wife and life partner she's somewhere in the back Alicia where are you please stand and say hello. This this weekend Alicia and I were encouraged to watch a movie by our soon to be four year old grandson that movie was the Lego movie how many of you seen it oh good well there are two wonderful messages in that movie one an ordinary construction worker named Emmett turns out to be the real hero the ordinary became the special the second message was if we stick together in a team anything is possible so who will be our Emmett who will lead the master builders of the center city who will disarm the crackle of San Antonio with their own piece of resistance who will rally the people across San Antonio to use their creativity to build our community up and lead the charge important questions for all of us and at Centro we'd like to hear our answer with the help of the 80 20 foundation we are excited to announce today the launch of the Julian Castro future urban leaders scholarship program with an award of $5,000 mayor we initiated this program to celebrate your accomplishments honor your commitment to the center city and to provide a young student with the opportunity to develop leadership skills our city will need in the future with the continued support of the community we will award this scholarship annually to a deserving high school student who plans to attend the San Antonio university or college and dedicate his or her education to the field of urban studies mayor congratulations again best wishes for a great success at HUD thank you for your dedicated service and thank you all everyone for being here before you head out and as you head out today we leave you with a bit of musical inspiration to carry you through the rest of the day thank you all for being here it's been a great time hope you had a good time as well thank you all very much